Long-Lost Son Read online

  In hindsight, Alice had always seemed to prefer burning her boats to working on a relationship.

  ‘So Rowdy has two sets of grandparents!’ Janey exclaimed. She really didn’t want to keep thinking about Alice when Rowdy was the one who needed her. ‘That’s wonderful!’

  ‘I never told them,’ Luke answered.

  She didn’t understand at first. ‘Well, you’ve hardly had time.’ It was still only Wednesday, less than twenty-four hours since he’d learned the truth about who Rowdy was.

  ‘No, I mean they never knew we’d had a child. I wanted to tell them, all through the pregnancy and after the birth. Thought it might help.’ Heal the rift, Janey understood. ‘Alice wanted to wait. She hadn’t forgiven them for the way they disapproved of our marriage. And then she left, just decamped while I was at work. She left a note.’ He quoted bitterly, ‘“It’s over. Don’t try to find us. I can’t deal with you in my life any more. You crush my soul.”’

  ‘Oh, hell, Luke!’

  ‘And what was I going to do then? Tell my parents that they had a grandson but that they might never see him because I crushed his mother’s soul and so I didn’t have a clue where he was?’

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  His mouth curved down at one corner. ‘For what? Arranging to have coffee at the hospital with your sister that day?’

  ‘So you remember.’

  ‘Our first meeting?’ His and Alice’s. ‘Of course I do! I was twenty-six years old and thought I had the golden touch. It never occurred to me that love at first sight doesn’t always lead to happy ever after. That the occasional five-minute conversation where you check out each other’s belief systems and longterm goals might be a good idea. That maybe this star-crossed lovers thing was, in fact, just a virulent case of—’ He stopped.

  Desire, Janey understood. Stars in your eyes.

  ‘Yeah.’ He reached a thumb and finger beneath his reflective sunglasses and rubbed his eyes.

  There was a silence.

  ‘So you have a lot to tell your parents,’ Janey said at last. It seemed inadequate. ‘Listen, will you please let me help with the pool? Otherwise I’m going to keep asking these awful questions.’

  ‘It’s fine. We probably need to get it all on the table. I’m not letting you help.’

  ‘I could wipe down the chairs after you get each one out. These two are unusable as they are, all slimy. There must be some rags. Seriously, I hate sitting still when someone else is working.’

  He looked at her and cocked his head to one side. ‘Yeah, I remember that about you.’ From family get-togethers in the year before he and Alice had gone to England. They’d had some biting exchanges, Janey and Luke, washing dishes together. They’d actually known each other quite well.

  ‘OK, then,’ he said, ‘but only if you take a break every ten minutes to sip long, cool drinks.’

  ‘So who’s bringing me the long, cool drinks?’ she asked slyly.

  He laughed, and she felt the most ridiculous spurt of pleasure because she sensed that his laugh didn’t come easily any more. It felt like a real achievement to have coaxed it out.

  So Janey wanted long, cool drinks.

  Luke left her lolling by the pool in the reclining outdoor lounger he’d retrieved for her from beneath the veranda. Watching from the window of the big kitchen to make sure she wasn’t illicitly removing debris from the pool, he didn’t even get as far as the fridge for several minutes. Just kept looking.

  They’d bugged the heck out of each other eight years ago, had really got under each other’s skins. He’d thought she was prim and stuffy in her attitudes to medicine and study and life, and clueless about her own attributes. It had driven him mad that she could have been almost as beautiful and scintillating and fun as her sister, if she’d had the slightest inkling.

  He’d wanted to drag her in front of a mirror and yell at her, ‘Can’t you see?’ Or play back recordings of the things she said and tell her, ‘Listen to yourself! How much do you think people like being lectured to about the politics of Third World malaria treatment when they’re having a Friday night drink? You don’t need to act as if your brain is the only thing you’ve got going for you, because it isn’t!’

  Why did she have to hold herself so stiffly? Why did she dress to hide that fabulous Stafford figure, instead of showing it off? Why didn’t every man she met know about her incredible hundred-watt smile? Why did she use her sharp mind to bore people rigid with her knowledge, instead of making them think or laugh? She had a sense of humour, but she so rarely used it. She was so bloody serious and tedious about the world!

  She frowned at men, instead of smiling at them, the way some women frowned at grubby little boys. Just a few weeks after they’d married, Alice had said to him, ‘You have to help me find a man for Janey, Luke. She’s a fabulous person, but men don’t see it, and it’s just wrong.’

  And he’d seriously tried. Thought about which of his single male friends she might go for—which ones wouldn’t be too much the football-mad type, which ones had interests she might share.

  They’d gone on three or four appalling double dates, him and Alice and Janey and whoever, where Janey had obviously known she was being set up, and every time she’d looked at him he’d seen her thinking, You low-life! This is the kind of man you think I’d want? Meanwhile, his friends hadn’t looked past the bad first impression, and who could blame them?

  He couldn’t remember which of them had called it quits on the double dating first. Janey had, he thought. That’s right, she’d asked Alice to tell him please not to embarrass both of them any further, and he’d been deeply relieved.

  Angry, too.

  She’d had no clue!

  Now it all seemed so long ago, and there she was by the pool, stretching her long legs in the sun, wearing a scarlet swimsuit borrowed from Georgie Turner that would have had her pulling at the fabric and crossing her arms over her chest eight years ago, because Georgie’s swimsuits were…um…minimal.

  And underwired.

  And if Janey hadn’t realised eight years ago that she had the fabulous Stafford figure, she knew it now. Just subtly. Satisfied about it, not showing it off. She looked more like Alice. And yet not at the same time, because she didn’t have Alice’s dangerous glitter and fire.

  Janey would always be quieter, he guessed. Her confidence would always come from within, from a hard-won understanding of her own strengths and successes and the way to let them show. The confidence would get stronger as she got older, he sensed, and it would translate into a subtle glow, like old gold.

  Lord, she’d probably be a complete and utter knockout when she was ninety-five!

  He’d better do something about those long, cool drinks…

  Checking in the fridge, he found bubbly mineral water and tropical juice, and remembered seeing a bottle of Campari lurking somewhere. He found it high in a cupboard and added a splash, as well as generous quantities of ice.

  It wasn’t enough.

  He wanted to see her smile, tease her a little.

  OK, how about pineapple and melon pieces? And someone had bought a bag of those paper cocktail umbrellas for some pre-wedding event of Emily’s and then had forgotten to use them. They were sitting under the sink. He skewered the pineapple and melon on the pointy ends of the umbrellas and put the drinks on a tray, along with a whole platter of fruit and a greenish glass jug of iced water already getting nicely beaded with humidity. The ice cubes tinkled against the sides of the jug when he picked it up.

  Yeah, this was the effect he was after.

  Ridiculously overdone.

  Sheesh, it felt good to do something frivolous and pointless just for the fun of it, to make somebody laugh.

  Even when Christina Barrett, née Farrelly, showed up and caught him at it. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Party?’

  ‘Private pool-cleaning party. Pregnant people don’t have to join in. But I can make you an umbrella drink.’

  ‘Thanks, bu
t I’m fine.’ She added casually, ‘Joe’s not around, is he?’

  ‘Hospital, I think.’

  ‘Couldn’t see him there.’

  ‘Who did you ask?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t…’ She winced and rubbed her back. ‘How about Georgie?’

  ‘Picking up Max from school. Left an hour ago, so I suspect she got roped in to some cleaning up.’

  ‘Oh, school’s open again already?’

  ‘The primary school is, just a couple of classrooms,’ he answered, ‘but not the high school. They had pretty extensive damage, and they still don’t have power, I heard. Come on, I think you need an umbrella drink.’

  ‘Yeah, I probably do.’

  He threw together another tropical cocktail, admittedly with less care than he’d taken over Janey’s, and followed Christina out to the pool. She looked pregnant with a capital P today. She and Joe had come over from New Zealand three weeks ago, thinking they’d organise the sale of Christina’s house in Crocodile Creek and have all the finances and legal formalities go through by the time the baby was old enough to travel.

  It had been a sensible plan.

  They hadn’t counted on a cyclone.

  Joe had been working all hours at the hospital, and the house had sustained a fair bit of damage. Grace O’Riordan wanted to buy the place, but Christina had reneged on the previously agreed price because of the new damage, and Grace was still recovering from her dramatic immersion in the floodwaters, so the issue couldn’t be resolved just yet. Christina and Joe might be in Crocodile Creek for a while.

  Janey and Christina hadn’t met yet. Luke made the introductions, kicking himself inside for minding that the extravagant drinks had lost their wow factor, with Christina as a distraction. He hadn’t been rewarded with Janey’s really full-on gorgeous smile at what he’d done, and he was disappointed.

  What’s this about? I’d go that far for a smile?

  ‘So you’re in general practice, yourself?’ Christina said to Janey. She sat on the end of the pool lounger.

  ‘That’s right,’ Janey answered. ‘Darwin. Pretty challenging sometimes. The way it would be here, I expect.’

  ‘Um, and are your obstetric skills up to scratch?’

  Janey looked a bit blank.

  Christina added quickly, ‘I mean, not to get too personal on very slight acquaintance or anything, but I was really hoping Georgie would be here and she’s not, and I’m probably making a fuss about nothing, but would you mind having a feel of this baby and telling me what you think? Second opinion, because I don’t trust my own skills right now.’

  Janey got serious and put down her drink. ‘You’re not feeling movement?’

  ‘It’s not that. There’s lovely movement. I just think it’s the wrong way around.’

  ‘It’s got time to turn,’ Luke pointed out. She wasn’t due for another three weeks.

  ‘Um, maybe…’

  ‘Christina?’

  ‘I’ve been having regular contractions for the past three hours.’ In a suitably dramatic punctuation to her statement, her waters broke at that moment and gushed onto the ground.

  And the baby was breech.

  Janey never even had time to give her second opinion because Christina bent over and shoved a hand between her legs and cried out, ‘There’s a foot! Ouch, oh, crumbs! I can feel a foot pushing straight down! I’m sure it’s a foot. Oh, this isn’t supposed to happen! I thought I had hours to go! It’s a first baby! First babies don’t come fast! And I don’t want it feet first! I’m going to have my footling breech baby on the pool lounger and I can’t find Joe.’

  ‘You’re not having your baby on the pool lounger,’ Janey said, squeezing Christina’s shoulders. ‘Absolutely not! Luke’s bringing a car, I’m putting on this sarong Georgie lent me, we’re getting you across to the hospital right now, and Joe will be there to see his baby born.’ She gave Luke a prompting glance, as if to say, So where’s that car? Why are you still here? And he departed, impressed.

  Although not surprised. All of that borderline-pedantic intellect and frowning at men eight years ago had somehow transformed over the years into just the right brisk, tender, confidence-inspiring bedside manner, and Christina already sounded calmer. ‘Right, right,’ she said, breathless. ‘And Luke can get the car within yards, can’t he, as half the pool fence blew away…? And I probably have hours to go.’

  ‘Now, about this alleged foot,’ was the last thing Luke heard.

  Joe met them in A and E, looking nervous and strained. ‘Is it really a footling breech?’

  ‘I did a quick check in the car,’ Janey said.

  It was a hospital vehicle, and Luke had thrown her a box of surgical gloves and a stethoscope from the bag of equipment in the front seat. They’d both told Christina the exam could wait until she was settled in the maternity unit, but she’d remained fairly panicky despite Janey’s best attempts to sound soothing, and she’d wanted that examination now!

  ‘She’s fully effaced,’ Janey continued, ‘four centimetres dilated, nice strong foetal heartbeat, but there’s a foot right there ready to pop out as soon as it can fit, which will be any minute. I don’t think there’s much chance we could get the baby turned at this point.’

  ‘And it really hurts!’ Christina gasped, in the building grip of a contraction. She couldn’t stay in the wheelchair they’d found for her. She dragged herself out of it and leaned on its arm, waiting out the pain with deep, steady breaths. When it had faded, she asked, ‘Where’s Georgie?’

  ‘Still at the school,’ Luke reported. ‘I just got her on her mobile. They’re having an impromptu working bee, so they can get a third classroom open tomorrow. Georgie chipped in to help, and I think she’s got Alistair practically rebuilding the playground.’

  ‘Typical!’ Joe groaned.

  His big hands worked nervously together. He looked about eighty per cent imminent new father and twenty per cent seasoned medical professional, and the twenty per cent was busy remembering all the horror birth stories he’d ever heard, and adding a few bells and whistles just for fun.

  You couldn’t help it in a situation like this when you were a doctor. Janey did the same thing when anyone she cared about was ill.

  ‘She’s on her way, but she’s pretty filthy,’ Luke said, about Georgie, ‘so she’s stopping in at the house for a thirty-second shower. Christina, she wants you prepped for a Caesar, she doesn’t want to take any chances on this. She’d deliver vaginally for a frank breech, she says, if you were keen on the idea and everything looked good, but not for this.’

  Christina nodded, clearly relieved. ‘A friend told me about the footling breech she had to deliver vaginally once. If I’d known I’d be in this situation, I would have blocked my ears and refused to listen. No, I want the Caesar! I’m not risking our baby’s health or my pelvic floor!’

  Joe squeezed her hands, then looked at Luke. ‘You’ll do the anaesthesia?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Luke answered. Janey looked a question at him—anaesthesia?—and he explained, ‘I did some training in it when I got back from London, when I decided to work in rural medicine.’

  ‘There’s such a shortage of those specialties outside of the capital cities,’ she agreed, inwardly impressed. His extra training showed a commitment to spending a serious amount of time away from the career-building centres of city medicine—not what she would have expected of the golden boy he’d been eight years ago.

  ‘General or epidural, Luke?’ Christina asked.

  ‘Your call. We’ve got time to think about it.’

  ‘Epidural. I want to be there, awake and alert, and I want Joe.’ She gripped his arm and they exchanged an emotional look. He helped her back into the wheelchair and turned it in the direction of the operating theatres.

  Luke nodded, then turned to Janey. ‘Looks like I’m going to be busy for a while. Why don’t you go back to your umbrella drink?’ He glanced down at the borrowed red swimsuit and blue-and-whit
e patterned sarong—glanced appreciatively?—and for the first time she felt self-conscious and distinctly underdressed. ‘And drink mine for me, too, while you’re at it.’

  ‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me, but isn’t there anything I can do?’

  ‘Janey, be sensible,’ he said gently, and brushed the back of his hand across her shoulder and up to her cheek.

  The contact felt so tender. He kept surprising her this way.

  No, she kept surprising herself. Where was all that bristling irritation and cynicism she’d always felt about him? She missed it, for some reason. Had she enjoyed disliking him, then?

  Hmm, she soon decided that she had. There was something safe and liberating in letting her negative feelings show, not trying to pretend. They’d both been pretty blunt with each other in the past. Now she wasn’t quite sure where they stood, or how to deal with him.

  ‘You’re half a day out of hospital yourself,’ he said. ‘Someone can run you across to the house. You probably shouldn’t try walking that far in this heat.’

  But she didn’t want to go back to the pool at the doctors’ house, she wanted to see Rowdy. ‘I’m going to sit with him,’ she told Luke. ‘Just sit, and see if…’ If he might speak. She didn’t say it out loud, but they both knew. ‘Drop in and get me when you’re finished.’

  ‘Only if you promise you’ll come quietly.’

  She smiled and held up her hand. ‘Promise.’ Then she watched him effortlessly slip into the role of doctor as he strode rapidly away from her along the corridor, radiating confidence with every step. He used to do that eight years ago, she recalled. She’d found it absolutely infuriating back then—acting so macho, like he was God.

  What had changed? Why didn’t it get under her skin any more?

  She didn’t know.

  ‘Looks great on you, Janey,’ said a female voice beside her.

  ‘You startled me!’ Janey clapped a hand to her chest.

  It was Georgie, fresh from the shower with the ends of her short dark hair still damp and her surgical gear rather baggy on her petite frame. She stepped back and tilted her head, examining her own swimsuit and sarong on someone else. ‘Seriously…Although it looks a bit tight in places.’